melissa shook

Melissa: You stayed out on the back porches?

Millie Murray: Yeah. And the front porches too. We didn’t dare go inside because sometimes there was no floor. You were lucky to see the door open but you were afraid that there was no floor, you could step and then go down to the no man’s land--kill yourself, probably. It’s a wonder those fellas that was drinkin’ didn’t get hurt.

M: Was there a whole group of you or was it just you and Dad?

Millie: No. Dad [Tom] and I, and there’s another lady - and her friend there. They kept arguin’ so much, I’d say, “The police are gonna come here, so just calm down a little so they won’t, you know, come there.” And after a while, some fellas found out we were there and they used to come and - yell and holler. So, I said, “We’d better get outa here again, let them stay here.” So, we moved to another place.

I used to go to the priest’s house all the time and get food for Dad and I - or we’d starve. I liked to make sure that he ate ’cause I knew I could take it, but (I could) see that he was gettin’ weaker and weaker - oh, we gotta do somethin’ about him.

M: Were you worried about him?

Millie: Oh, yuh, afraid that I might find him dead beside me somethin’--but he had to go to a house of shelter - pick Pine Street - cause he was losin’ weight--he was sick. So they took ’im.

M: Must have been a hard life.

Millie: But I’d do it all over again if I had him.

M: How come you went right to work at Pine Street, Millie?

Millie: I don’t know. I asked ’em if I could work there. After a short time, they said, “Would you like to work here?” I said, “Sure. I love to make beds.” They said, “Make beds? We need you.” I like to make beds. A lotta them don’t, but I do. Do you? (Laughs.)

M: No. I don’t. Tell me a little bit about Pine Street, what it’s like living at Pine Street.

Millie: Beautiful. I like strippin’, I mean, the beds. I’ll be makin’ those beds till I’m a hundred.

M: Were you afraid when you were out on the streets?

Millie: No.

M: Were times different then? Was it less dangerous?

Millie: Oh, sure, if you’d meet somebody, they’d say, “Hi. How are you? You all right? You got some money get somethin’ to eat?” Or somethin’ like that. Never, “Gimme your ring. Gimmee your watch. Got any money?” Dad got hurt once. That’s when they cut his arm. I think they pulled him in to some doors in some alleyway, cut his arm BIG. I got him to a hospital and they hadda stitch it up. He was never able to use that arm afterwards.

M: But that’s the only dangerous thing that happened?

Millie: Yuh. I pity them in the street now. Oh, they can come to Pine Street and they’re sure to help ’em. They try to get you situated somewhere along the way. Pine Street’s done a lot for everybody.

M: Would you have gone to a shelter?

Millie: Oh, sure, if we knew there was one. How long did you know Pine Street?

M: Since ’83. Tell me one more thing about talking to Dad every night. What do you say?

Millie: Tell him to come back. Or be happy, I know he can’t come back. (Little laugh.) I know he’s happy with the Lord. We’ll all be happy with the Lord. Still a long wait. I gotta strip some more.

M: So, what do you say to Dad at night?

Millie: I miss ’im. I love ’im. Some sweet day I’ll be there.

Millie Murray. Interviewed at my house in Chelsea. 1990. Millie is on live-in staff at Pine Street Inn and works everyday.

About Streets Are For Nobody

For many years I worked the occasional 3-11 shift as a counselor at a woman’s shelter in Boston. When I took a year leave-of-absence before my tenure decision, I was a coordinator in the women’s clinic, a job I left with great reluctance.

During those years, I listened to many stories, mostly about everyday happenings. I remember a woman with whom I played cards with saying, “There are so many lines here, bed line, dinner line, shower line, breakfast line, that I get in any line I see anywhere. I found myself standing in line for theater tickets the other day.” She worked full-time, cleaning bathrooms at Macys, and later found an apartment.

Homelessness was a fairly popular topic for documentary photographers then. My goal was to take portraits that did not telegraph that these women lived in shelters and, through the excerpted interviews, allow their experiences and opinions to be heard. As one of the women once said, “Even someone who’s crazy can tell you what’s wrong here.”

Rich Weintraub, director of Long Island Shelter, allowed me to photograph there. Soon after I started, I was asked to apply for a MassProductions grant through the Boston Center for the Arts. Elise Manella, the very helpful administrator for my project, arranged for the exhibit in the gallery there.

The unique aspect of this work was that I facilitated a Conference in which women, who were or had been homeless, were the leaders of round table discussions. It took almost of year of weekly meetings with these women and a number of those who worked in the field to define the issues to be discussed. A catalogue of the photographs and interview images was given away at the Conference.

Fortunately Fred Markowitz, who worked at the Federation of Community Planning in Cleveland, attended a summer class I gave at the Visual Studies Workshop in Buffalo. He got interested in this project, raised money for me to interview women in Cleveland, and sponsored a traveling exhibit that was shown in colleges and libraries around Ohio. Because he saw my work as a vehicle for discussion, he also raised money to sponsor workshops during which homeless women spoke. A catalogue of the images and interview excerpts from Boston and Cleveland was published. Fred had a remarkable dedication to initiating community discussions about significant social issues.

When I visited my friend, Nancy Lutz, in Arizona, I interviewed and photographed six or seven more women that became a part of the exhibition. Linda Swartz allowed me to use her darkroom to print the work from Cleveland and Arizona.

The exhibition prints that were framed are now in the collection of the Center for Contemporary Photography at the University of Arizona. They also have the original and edited versions of the interviews.

In 1982, my daughter, Kristina, and I volunteered to serve Thanksgiving dinner at a major shelter for people who are homeless here in Boston. That following summer I started to work there which started a pattern of volunteering and working which allowed me to learn about the people who experience this devastating and disorienting situation called ’homelessness.’ This body of work, “Streets Are For Nobody” expresses my hope that others may hear, in some way, their voices, see them as other than stereotypes, know that they are not statistics, but complex, diverse people who happen to have traveled down a difficult path which all too often started in childhood.

The wall text is not so much representative of the women’s personal stories as it is of specific ideas that seem important to the forum, Homeless Women Speak, which will take place at the Boston Center of the Arts on May 4th. At the beginning of August a very small group of women who were homeless and women who care about this issue started meeting to plan this event. Four of the women interviewed have participated in the planning.

Though the material certainly doesn’t cover the range of reasons people become homeless, it may help you to understand how aware some of the women interviewed were of the complex causes which make it so difficult to escape from this situation, ways in which they are judged and dismissed by strangers who they pass everyday on the street or sit next to in subways. They speak of shelter life - friends they have made of staff and other homeless women, the ways in which shelters could be better organized to meet the needs of different groups, the pain of watching another person sink into depression. They also speak of the aftermath - the difficulty of adjusting to living alone once an apartment or room has been found and the difficulty of furnishing it. The text is taken from edited interviews that run from 15-35 pages in length. My hope is to publish a book with these interviews since I think it is valuable to hear from the people themselves rather than about them.

When I naively began this project by interviewing Stephanie back in February of 1988, I assumed I could manage it, as I have other projects, working along slowly, taping conversations, transcribing the material and taking photographs. When Janet Langsam, then Director of the Boston Center for the Arts, phoned to ask if I’d like to apply for the MassProductions Grant through their auspices, I agreed, though not with a lot of enthusiasm. I am now extraordinarily grateful to Elise Mannella and John Delancey who worked all that weekend to pull the proposal into workable form and to the Massachusetts Cultural Council for giving me the MassProductions Grant, 1988-1990. I am particularly grateful to Elise Mannella who guided this project - exhibit, catalogue and forum - from the beginning and to Bruce MacDonald, Acting Director, BCA, who has helped in this final crucial stage. It is certainly clear that without the funding and without Elise’s continual help this project would not have been possible. It is also clear that in the current economic climate there would have been no money available for such a project. It is more sadly obvious that funding for the programs that support people who are homeless has been cut, a problem which seriously jeopardized people in already precarious situations.

I am most grateful to the women who allowed me to interview and photograph them. Their words have informed every aspect of this project. Of the people interviewed, thirteen have housing. I have no contact with seven. Unfortunately, two have died. This work could not have been done without the support of Richard Weintraub, Director of the Long Island Shelter; Ernestine A’Hearn, Substance Abuse Program, Long Island Shelter; Betty Washington, Director, Woods-Mullin Shelter, Long Island Shelter; Michele Olem, Director, Day Care, Salvation Army, Cambridge. I appreciate their support.

I want to thank Cindy Rubin who transcribed the interviews, carefully preserving the tone of the speaker; Lee Mondale who made the many work prints that I’ve been able to give away; David Herwaldt who matted the prints; Amy Brigham who designed the walltext. My particular thanks go to Jane Peterson who worked with me on this project, her generous support and thoughtful questions. She helped edited the interviews and chose most of the catalogue selections. Dana Wade and John Hancock Financial Services generously printed the catalogue that Amy Brigham designed. I also want to thank Linda Swartz who so freely let me use her darkroom to make the exhibition prints and pushed me as I photographed. I would also like to thank Jean Humez, Nancy Kassell, Marie Kennedy, Joan McMahon, Barbara McInnis, John Swan and Mark Wadsworth. I am most grateful to the staff and women guests at the Pine Street Inn from whom I have learned so much.